Despite a few protests from the People for the Ethical Treatment of Everything, the idea spread. Mike Kitchell exploded one:

Sean Lovelace shot some arrows at one:

And it became clear. The only way to truly finish Scorch Atlas was by destroying your copy. Thus: we propose a new contest. Destroy your copy. Better than any has destroyed before you. Smash it smear it, pepper it with flak, and digest it thoroughly. We want you to do your worst. Also acceptable: creative methods of destruction that don't necessarily destroy the book physically but endanger it, terrify it, or brutalize it. Like humiliating the book in public, or changing the text, or reading it aloud to your grandmother wearing a gas mask.

Post your video to YouTube or Vimeo. Let us know you did so at contest@featherproof.com by September 9th, 2010 (Scorch Atlas's birthday.) Then we'll pick a winner based on criteria of Risk, Bloodlust, Derring-do, Internet research, Smarts, and Pheromones Released.

ONE GRAND PRIZE WINNER will receive: the complete featherproof fiction catalog of books, including a signed, first edition (blackened edges) Scorch Atlas, in clean/perfect/mint condition, Ever by Blake Butler, both issues of No Colony, a t-shirt that says 'Knife That', mini-books, Kristina Born's One Hour of Television, stickers, a packet of Blake's hair, a book that Blake loves destroyed just for you, and a drawing he made in his sleep. It sounds like a joke, I know. But this grand prize package is SO NOT A JOKE. It's for real.

FIVE FIRST PRIZE WINNERS will receive a signed, first edition (blackened edges) Scorch Atlas, in clean/perfect/mint condition. To replace the one you mangled.